This story first appeared in The Indian Express

Fifteen years ago, the Pakistani security establishment sought to make a distinction between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The good Taliban were the Afghan Taliban and other groups that served Pakistan’s interests in the region, including the Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP’s) return to acts of terror, extortion and hostage-taking has turned the clock back for Pakistan a decade — although the situation is still not as bad as it was then — and has severely undermined its relations with the Afghan Taliban that the Pakistan government and Army accuse of harbouring the group.

An angry exchange of words on January 2 was indicative of how the promise of having the Taliban in Kabul has gone wrong for those at the wheel in Pakistan. From a cocky ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed drinking tea with aides at Kabul’s high security 5-star hotel Serena in September 2021, telling the Afghan media that everything was going to be fine, to Pakistan Home Minister Rana Sanaullah threatening to bomb TTP hideouts in Afghanistan, it has been a long 16 months in their ties.

To Sanaullah’s statement, Ahmad Yasir, a member of the Doha-based Taliban, responded with a tweet saying Afghanistan was not Syria, nor Pakistan Turkey (referring to Turkey’s bombing of Kurds in Syria). “This is Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. Never think of a military attack on us, or else you may end up with the embarrassing repeat of the [post-Bangladesh War] agreement with India.”

Soon after this exchange, Pakistan’s National Security Council put out a strong but more measured statement at the end of a two day meeting on this and other issues facing the country, including the tanking economy.

“No country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries and facilitation to terrorists and Pakistan reserves all rights in that respect to safeguard her people,” it says. “Pakistan’s security is uncompromisable and the full writ of the state will be maintained on every inch of Pakistan’s territory”.

But it is unclear what it can do to achieve this.

Taliban takeover in Afghanistan emboldened the TTP

The TTP, which has old links with the Afghan Taliban, became active once again in the north-west tribal areas of Pakistan (earlier FATA, but now part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) after the Afghan Taliban captured Kabul.

While some in Pakistan, including former Prime Minister Imran Khan, hailed the victory of the Afghan Taliban as the victory of Islam over America, some far-right religious parties declared the day was not far when sharia would be implemented in Pakistan. A Gallup poll around that time found 55 per cent of over 2,000 respondents to be in favour of sharia law.

Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, the former Pakistan Army chief who retired from office two months ago, had warned at the time that the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan’s old enemy TTP were “two sides of the same coin”. Moderate voices in Pakistan had warned of a blowback on their country that has proved prescient. A matter of concern at the time was the release of a large number of TTP prisoners from jails in Kabul by the new rulers of Afghanistan.

Emboldened by these events, the TTP, whose leaders declared that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan that was a model to replicate in Pakistan, broke a long lull in their attacks inside Pakistani territory. They also started asserting themselves in the tribal parts of KP province, asking men not to trim their beards, and extorting money from residents of the area as a kind of “tax”.

Fears that the TTP would open Pakistan’s doors to the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) — the two are linked — were also high in the minds of Pakistani officials.

It took a major massacre for the Pak Army to really go after the TTP

For long, the Pakistan security establishment’s reflex policy has been to buy peace with the Pakistani Taliban instead of fighting them. Critics of the Pakistan Army and this policy said the force had got so used to outsourcing its battles to terror groups and being preoccupied with its own businesses, that it was no longer a fighting Army.

For its part, the Pakistan Army was concerned it should not be labelled as “fighting our own people”. This was a lesson the army had drawn from the commando attack ordered by former President Gen Pervez Musharraf on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007, which was widely criticised in Pakistan, and which led to the creation of the TTP.

It was only after Pakistan’s ruling elite panicked at the TTP’s silent takeover of the scenic Swat Valley during 2008-09, that the army decided to carry out its first big operation against the group, projecting it as a proxy of India’s R&AW.

But the Pakistan Army’s most serious operation began after the TTP massacred 132 students and 17 teachers at Army Public school in Peshawar in December 2014. Many TTP leaders and cadres fled to Afghanistan at the time.

But in 2021, the Pak Army switched back to betting on peace

The safe havens of the TTP on Afghan soil remained a point of contention between Pakistan and the pro-India Ashraf Ghani government. But with the Ghani government gone in August 2021, and the Afghan Taliban, which owed its victory to Pakistan in some measure — large numbers of Pakistanis were patting themselves on the back for this — in power in Kabul, the TTP seemed to have got more energised.

From September 2021, as the TTP intensified its war in Pakistan, the Pakistan Army decided to sue back for peace. In any case, Imran Khan, then the Prime Minister, had always been a votary of talking to the TTP and for understanding “the Taliban way of life”. Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, the ISI boss who was transferred out as corps commander Peshawar, led the talks.

The Pakistani military wanted the TTP to stop the violence and enter the mainstream, but the TTP’s main demand was a demerger of the FATA areas from KP province, perhaps with the intention of making this an enclave, with passage rights for Afghan Taliban. Though a truce was declared in June 2022, the talks were going nowhere, and the TTP walked out.

On November 29 last year, when Gen Asim Munir, the new Pakistan Army chief took over, the TTP declared they were ending the truce. Since then there has been a sharp spike in attacks by the TTP, including a suicide bombing in Islamabad, the first such incident in the capital since 2014.

On December 20, the TTP took policemen and army officials hostage at a counter-insurgency centre in Bannu, while releasing all other inmates. When talks for the release of the hostages failed, the army launched a huge operation that ended with the killing of 33 TTP cadres, and two Special Service Group commandos.

Pakistan’s dealings with the Afghan Taliban have gone off-script

From Pakistan’s point of view, the most satisfactory outcome of the Taliban victory in Afghanistan was the sidelining of India, which had a two-decade run of developing infrastructure and providing other assistance to the country.

But the two sides fell out over their differences on the Durand Line — the Afghans have never accepted it as an international border with Pakistan, and to the ire of the Taliban, Pakistan does not want to allow unrestricted crossings across the Line.

Further, the killing by the United States of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul in July 2022, has contributed to the tensions between the two sides, with question about the Pakistan security establishment’s role in the incident.

The expectation that Pakistan would play a big role in the new Afghanistan under the Taliban has been belied. Unlike the last time, Islamabad has joined the rest of the international community in not recognising the Taliban regime. Curiously, it is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister in the Kabul regime and an ISI protege, who is said to be sheltering the TTP in south-eastern Afghanistan. According to long-time Haqqani and TTP watcher Antonio Guistozzi, Sirajuddin Haqqani is using the TTP as leverage against Pakistan. Ayesha Siddiqa, the Pakistani analyst, believes this may be intended to clear his own name in Afghanistan in l’affaire Zawahiri.

Fifteen years ago, the Pakistani security establishment sought to make a distinction between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The good Taliban were the Afghan Taliban and other groups, including Sunni extremist groups and, in the broadest sense, included groups that served Pakistan’s interests in the region, including the Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The TTP were the bad Taliban, because they were targeting Pakistan, its civilians and security forces, and other state symbols such as infrastructure. Now the good Taliban and the bad Taliban are on the same side. Pakistan seems to be caught in a contradiction of its own making.

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

This is Wickremesinghe’s fifth time in the office. Each of his earlier terms was truncated, and on two of those occasions he was dismissed by the President — by Chandrika Kumaratunga in 2004, and by Maithripala Sirisena in 2018.

A month ago, in an interview to The Indian Express, Ranil Wickremesinghe said he would “stay out” if asked to become Prime Minister of Sri Lanka again, as he did not have the numbers to form a government. Wickremesinghe is the sole member of his United National Party (UNP) in parliament.

“I have not been asked (to become Prime Minister) and even if I were, I would stay out. Because what can I do? I’m a party of one, how can you run an administration with one? Parliament means you must have support. And numbers. Only the party with the largest numbers forms [the government]. I haven’t got that,” he said.

On Thursday, Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Prime Minister, proving that if a week is a long time in politics, a month is an era.

Soon afterward, responding to a question from a British journalist on how he could claim a mandate to run the country with his single parliamentary seat, he shot back: “In 1939, (Winston) Churchill had only four members backing him. How did he become the Prime Minister then? I have done the same. Know your history.”

This is Wickremesinghe’s fifth time in the office. Each of his earlier terms was truncated, and on two of those occasions he was dismissed by the President — by Chandrika Kumaratunga in 2004, and by Maithripala Sirisena in 2018. As Prime Minister of an interim government, his fifth term is also likely to be short.

In 2002, Wickremesinghe negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The war was the biggest challenge to Sri Lanka’s existence as a nation then. He did not survive in office long enough to see the ceasefire collapse. But the present economic-political crisis may prove to be his biggest challenge yet.

His appointment has been greeted with relief by those who see him as a safe pair of hands to provide political stability, paving the way for a resolution to the economic crisis. As PM from 2015 to 2018, he negotiated a $1.5 bn bailout from the IMF to avert a balance of payments crisis. Wickremesinghe, a nephew of the late President J R Jayewardene, who turned Sri Lanka into a free market economy, shares his uncle’s economic views, inspiring confidence among international partners and the old business and political elites of Colombo.

Among the first to congratulate him was the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chang. “Looking forward to working with Ranil Wickremesinghe. His appointment as Prime Minister, and the quick formation of an inclusive government, are first steps to addressing the crisis and promoting stability. We encourage meaningful progress at the IMF and long-term solutions that meet the needs of all Sri Lankans,” she tweeted.

But even as he gets down to work on the economy, Wickremesinghe will be expected to address the political crisis centred on the popular anger against the Rajapaksa family and the demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must step down — or he risks being seen as a collaborator with a regime that has run out of political capital. “GoGotaGo” could easily become “GoRanilGo”.

There was disbelief among the GoGotaGo protesters on Thursday that a leader whose party had failed to win a single seat in the 2020 elections, and who had made it to parliament as a nominated member (every party gets to nominate members on the basis of its vote share — the UNP got to nominate one member with its 2.15%), had been made Prime Minister.

The UNP was wiped out because of the collapse of Wickremesinghe’s 2015-18 term in office along with President Sirisena, the deadlock between them contributing to the failure to prevent the Easter terrorist bombings of 2019. Wickremesinghe is also blamed for failing to punish a key member of his government in a case of financial fraud known as the Central Bank bonds scam.

The fact is Wickremesinghe’s support in parliament will come from the discredited Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, the Rajapaksa political vehicle. SLPP members who owe allegiance to Mahinda Rajapaksa,  form his cabinet Cabinet. As if to underline this, within minutes of Wickremesinghe’s appointment, Rajapaksa, who resigned as Prime Minister on Monday — and is hiding from angry protesters at the Trincomalee naval base, and has been barred by a court from leaving the country — sent his felicitations. “Congratulations to the newly appointed Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. I wish you all the best as you navigate these troubled times.”

As he left the Gangaramaya Temple in Colombo where he had gone to offer prayers soon after being sworn in, Wickremesinghe was swarmed with questions about why he was supporting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

“You all voted for him, and now you want him to go home. I also don’t mind if he goes home, but my work is to see that everyone in the country has enough to eat, that there is no shortage of fuel or power in the country. What do you want?” Wickremesinghe bounced the question back to the media scrum.

But the question will return on Tuesday, when an opposition no-confidence motion against the President is to be taken up in Parliament. Though there is no provision in the Constitution for such a motion — the President can be removed only by impeachment — the Speaker allowed it to be submitted as a “motion of displeasure”.

The Samagi Jana Balewegaya, a party made up mainly of former UNP members who rebelled against Wickremesinghe under the leadership of Sajith Premadasa, is spearheading the no-confidence motion. With 52 members, Premadasa is the leader of the opposition in the House.

Premadasa had refused to take up the Prime Ministership of an interim government until President Rajapaksa committed to stepping down. Premadasa wants the presidency abolished. The Rajapaksa deal with Wickremesinghe may have scuttled his plans.

President Rajapaksa has hinted in an address to the nation that he is ready to roll back some of his presidential powers to give the interim administration a free hand. However, demands for his resignation continue unabated on the streets of Colombo.

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

Speaking to The Indian Express, Wickremesinghe also said that to tide over the current food shortage, Sri Lanka must tap its friends in South Asia — India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — to “borrow” foodgrains that could be returned after two or three years.

AS SRI Lanka’s political vacuum extended into its tenth day, and protesters demanding the resignation of the Rajapaksa family pitched tents near the presidential office on the main seafront, the country’s former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe summed up the way forward in one line: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must resign or explain to the people why he won’t.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Wickremesinghe also said that to tide over the current food shortage, Sri Lanka must tap its friends in South Asia — India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — to “borrow” foodgrains that could be returned after two or three years.

He also suggested that a consortium of India, Japan, China, South Korea and the EU could help Sri Lanka until negotiations with the IMF are concluded and the implementation of a bailout begins. He flagged that Indian credit lines for fuel and food would run out by May, and Sri Lanka had to take steps right now to prevent the crisis from overtaking the country.

“He (Gotabaya) has been elected by the people. Even the Parliament can’t force him to resign. So it’s up to him to decide. And he has told me he’s not resigning. In which case, I told him, you have to explain to the people what you’re willing to do and why you are not resigning,” Wickremesinghe, who was prime minister of Sri Lanka from 2015 to 2019, said.

“Either he has to step down or win back the confidence of the people,” he said, describing the protests as Sri Lanka’s “Arab Spring” moment, with the country’s youth becoming the symbol of discontent among a cross-section of people from farmers in rural areas to the elite in Colombo.

Responding to the fact that the Arab Spring did not end well in many of the countries that were swept by it, he said: “I do not think the military will come out here against the people, because they are affected by the same issues as the people. But we have to avoid an Arab Spring ending.”

At the moment, there is a political vacuum in Sri Lanka’s government. President Gotabaya has been attempting to stabilise his government since last week, when all his ministers handed in their resignations to give him a free hand to form a new Cabinet.

Gotabaya had hoped that this would placate the protesters. Three times last week, there were rumours that a new Cabinet would be sworn in. But it did not happen. It appears that few in the Rajapaksa camp want to be visible and tasked with resolving a difficult crisis. And the street seems to be in no mood to accept cosmetic changes. As one protest placard put it: “Resign, not reassign.”

Ali Sabri, who was appointed Finance Minister the day after he resigned as Justice Minister on April 4, put in his papers again, but the President did not accept the resignation. He remains the Finance Minister.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has a wafer thin majority in Parliament, issued a desperate appeal for the protesters to return home in an address to the nation on Monday. But while there has been talk of a no-confidence motion, the many parties and a set of MPs who have broken away, have not taken any concrete steps towards finalising their next steps.

Wickremesinghe denied rumours that he had been offered the prime ministership by the Rajapaksas. Among Colombo’s political elite, there is nostalgia for the promise held out by the 2015-2019 United National Front for Good Governance — a coalition between Wickrermesinghe and then President Maithripala Sirisena — but that remained unfulfilled.

“I’ve not been asked, and even if I were, I would stay out, because what can I do? I am a party of one (as the only member of his party UNP in Parliament). How can you run the administration? Parliament means you must have support, and numbers. Only the party with the largest numbers forms the government,” he said, adding, however, that he had advised the government on how to mitigate the food crisis.

He said he made three proposals at a recent all-party conference in Parliament.

“We are running out of time, we are running out of fuel, we are running out of food. So while you wait for discussions to start with IMF, speak to the World Bank and ADB, and see what short-term assistance you can get. Secondly, until the IMF talks are over, and implementation is done, we won’t get our orders. So have a consortium, India, Japan, China, South Korea, EU, to see how they can help us. And thirdly, to address the food shortage, have arrangements with the South Asian countries — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh — to borrow food, and then repay them in two or three years,” he said.

“China also has some surplus stocks and there are other places, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, we have to see, but start working with South Asia,” he said.

Wickremesinghe said India had been generous with its assistance. “India has done more than enough. They’ve given us $ 1.5 billion. They have never given that kind of assistance to any other country in the neighbourhood. So we have to be thankful for that. But that will be over, fuel (credit line) will be over by mid-May. The other goods, and rice, will all be over. Then what do we do?” he said.

Wickremesinghe also dismissed as “not the immediate priority” the abolition of Sri Lanka’s powerful executive presidency, as proposed by Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa, who broke away from the UNP to form his Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

“The priorities are first food and the political establishment, working with the youth and winning their confidence and meeting their demands. Without that , you can’t handle any of the issues. This (talk about abolition of executive presidency) is more of a reaction by people in the political sphere. But remember, this requires a two-thirds majority. We haven’t got a two-thirds majority in parliament. That’s the first first issue. Secondly, it takes time, and we haven’t got that much time — the bigger issues will blow up before that,” he said.

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

In 2015, after Mahinda’s shock defeat in the presidential elections, tearful supporters greeted him in this village and pledged to bring him back to power. But it seems that even here, people have run out of patience.

In the small fishing town of Tangalle, 200 km from Colombo, Carlton, the ancestral home of Sri Lanka’s ruling family, used to be thronged by adoring visitors whenever Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa visited.

The mood has changed.

“In 2009, when he finished the war against the LTTE and came here, we were proud. We went to Carlton and like we do for the Buddha, we did the same for him,” said Roshan, a tuk-tuk driver waiting for passengers in the local market.

“But if I meet him now, I will say, ‘thank you very much for finishing the war, but if you can’t do anything now, please hand over the job to someone better’,” said the 39-year-old father of one.

Explaining the dollar squeeze that has led to crippling shortages of essential commodities and an unaffordable rise in prices, Roshan said: “When I have 2 kg of rice at home, and 1 kg gets over, I know I have to buy 1 kg to replace it. But they waited till all the dollars were finished.”

Until a few months ago, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to find anyone with a bad opinion of the Rajapaksas in this family pocket borough. In 2015, after Mahinda’s shock defeat in the presidential elections, tearful supporters greeted him in this village and pledged to bring him back to power. But it seems that even here, people have run out of patience.

Last week, around 200 local students were not as polite as Roshan in expressing their discontent. Shouting “Go Gota Go” against Mahinda’s brother President Gotabaya, they marched down the road towards Carlton. They broke through the yellow barricades and rushed towards the house until the police used teargas and water cannons to disperse them.

Today, Carlton is guarded by a posse of armed policemen, as well as the Special Task Force, an elite anti-terrorist paramilitary, with barricades at the ready.

Hambantota district, which includes Tangalle, sent three Rajapaksas to Parliament — Mahinda’s son Namal, his brother Chamal and nephew Ajith — and three others from the same party. It gave Gotabaya 66 per cent of votes in the 2019 presidential election. But today, the discontent with the first family is all too evident.

“I also voted for the Rajapaksas,” said a woman who was standing in a queue outside the government-run Sathosa fair price shop in Hambantota town in a brave attempt to stock up for the local new year on April 14. “We have to manage with what little we get,” she said.

“No feeling for New Year,” said a teenaged girl at the shop. Her mother’s face wrinkled at the mention of Rajapaksa. “It’s sad. I voted for them and look at what they have done to us,” she said, pointing to her meagre purchase of rice.

Milani Hareem, who contested the Hambantota municipal council elections as an Opposition candidate, said large numbers of Rajapaksa supporters were rethinking their choice.

“This is their stronghold. There will always be supporters of the Rajapaksas here. But now, with the country in this situation, they are seeing the anger of the people, and they don’t want to be seen on the wrong side. We can’t predict how they will vote if an election is held, but the Rajapaksas are not as popular at this moment,” said Hareem, who belongs to the Malay Muslim community, a small ethnic group with a significant presence in Hambantota.

“The people have now understood that you cannot run a country by dividing them over language, race and religion,” she said. Unlike some other parts of the country with a sizeable Muslim population, Hambantota had not seen any communal incident, she said.

Hambantota town, 40 km from Tangalle, is the district headquarters, where the Rajapaksas first displayed their partiality for big-ticket infrastructure projects that would turn into white elephants and drain the country’s resources.

Hareem recalled how Mahinda Rajapaksa had said that he would build a city that would be “no less than Colombo”, but ended with wasteful expenditure.

Among them is the controversial Hambantota international port, which the government ended up leasing to its Chinese builders to repay the construction loans. Also on that list is the Mattala airport and a convention centre, which was built to host official functions but is now being hired out mostly for weddings.

Perhaps, the most used of all these infrastructure projects is the Chinese-built four-lane expressway from Colombo to Hambantota, and the international cricket stadium, where matches are held regularly.

Sithy Sabeena Rezik, a member of Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which contested the 2019 presidential and 2020 parliamentary elections as alliance partners of the Rajapaksas, said she is now telling supporters that SLFP is no longer part of the tie-up.

“We are helpless to do anything for the people at this moment. I feel really guilty about that. We can hardly show our faces to our supporters,” she said.

In Tangalle, in response to the protests, some Rajapaksa supporters have been seen near Carlton, holding placards that say: “We want Gota”. But Roshan, the tuk-tuk driver, is not impressed: “They are people who have been given jobs by the Rajapaksas. They have no choice but to come and show their support.”

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

In Colombo, Saturday saw tens of thousands converge at Galle Face, the capital’s main ocean front.

Sri Lanka’s economic distress and its ruling Rajapaksa family have achieved what many thought was impossible: bringing Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim together and, at least for now, uniting them in one cry: “Go Gota go”.

On the streets, protestors chant: “We are not divided by class, We are not divided by race.” A new generation of Sri Lankans has taken the lead in the outpouring of anger against the Rajapaksa family, and they do not appear to carry the baggage of Sri Lanka’s ethnic divide – described in Sri Lanka as racial divide — which the Rajapaksas, both Gotabaya and his brother Mahinda, did nothing to end, continuing to feed it even after the civil war ended in 2009.

The present offers an opportunity to turn the page on the past, said Tamil parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran. That is why he politely deflected Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin’s offer to send food and other essential supplies for the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

“We have been thankful for the assistance extended by the Indian government, and we welcome the offer of assistance from the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. But that assistance should be for all Sri Lankans at this time, not just Tamils. That will have a positive impact,” Sumanthiran told The Indian Express Saturday.

Sri Lanka’s Tamil community has learnt the hard way – when Tamil Nadu politicians take up their cause, the reactions from the majority Sinhala-Buddhist community are negative.

Sumanthiran pointed to placards held up by protestors apologising for the killings of Tamils during the war and said this was evidence of a new thinking among the young. Stalin’s offer to help the Tamils might be well-intentioned, Sumanthiran said, but was likely to be misused by elements waiting for an opportunity to defame the protests.

In Colombo, Saturday saw tens of thousands converge at Galle Face, the capital’s main ocean front.

We are here to show that people are together and that this corruption cannot go on and that the President definitely cannot go on,” said Charini, a lawyer holding a placard that said People’s Power. “He has to go, and this is to ask him to go, and then the reforms can come. It is up to the parliament what comes next,” she said. “First he has to go, then all the Rajapaksas must go, and then the country can breathe easy.”

The numbers swelled through the day, and into the night. Initially, the police made way for vehicles to pass through. Many honked in support of the protestors, some distributed water. Later, as the road was taken over by the protestors, it was closed to traffic.

Among the political class, the refrain is “after Rajapaksa who?” even though there is no sign that either of Gotabaya or Rajapaksa is contemplating an exit.

Nevertheless, Opposition politicians are racing to finalise an agreement between themselves on what should replace Rajapaksa rule before Parliament meets again on April 19, hoping to end the political impasse.

“We have the numbers to move a no-confidence motion but those who want to support it first want to be sure what comes the day after the no-confidence vote is carried,” said a leading politician involved in the deliberations.

The government of President Rajapaksa, and his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, has lost its majority. The Opposition has spurned the President’s offer to join a national government. Opposition politicians want the Rajapaksas to step down and make way for a new dispensation.

Hoping to placate the protestors, the President got his entire Cabinet to resign. But he has not been able to appoint a new one. One ruling party politician who was appointed the new Finance minister resigned within 24 hours.

The main opposition party is the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, led by Sajith Premadasa, with the sure support of 48 parliamentarians. Another 42 have separated from the government and call themselves “independent”. The Tamil National Alliance has 10 parliamentarians.

A group of 20 parliamentarians is said to be willing to support a no-confidence motion but will not commit itself without the assurance that it will be part of the next dispensation. Their support would be crucial.

The SJB leader, the son of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa, believes this is a chance to abolish the executive presidency through a vote in parliament, so that even if Rajapaksa does not quit office, he will be stripped of his absolute powers.

The proposal would have to be put to a referendum even in the event of two-thirds parliamentary approval, but going by the mood on the streets, some Opposition leaders are confident that it would receive a resounding yes from voters. There is also the view that this should be followed by an impeachment of Gotabaya.

The TNA’s Sumanthiran said Tamil parliamentarians would support moves to end the executive presidency. “Ending the President’s executive powers would also entail taking away the executive powers from the Governors of the provinces also. If not, he can still exercise executive powers on all devolved subjects through his agents. Once the offices of the Governor also become ceremonial in nature, and coupled with action to implement the 13th Amendment, devolution will become a little more meaningful than at present,” he said.

However, there is concern in the political class that if push comes to shove, President Rajapaksa, who does not seem to have many options, but commands much respect and loyalty from the military for empowering them to defeat the LTTE — especially his own Gajaba regiment (he used to be an Army officer) — might resort to the unthinkable: the “Myannmar model”, as it is referred to here in the Sri Lankan capital.

Army commander General Shavendra Fernando has said the armed forces will stand by the Constitution. “That is a welcome reassurance, but given the way the armed forces have been pumped, one hopes that there won’t be a temptation to fill a political vacuum,” said Sunday Times editor Sinha Ratnatunga.

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

Stores empty, despair grows: ‘You messed with wrong generation’

In 2001, when the Sri Lankan economy registered negative growth of minus-1.4 per cent after a particularly bad phase in the war against Tamil Tigers, G L Peiris, then the finance minister, was asked what the fallout would be. He retorted: “When you are sleeping on a straw mat, you don’t fall off.”

Two decades on, Sri Lanka has fallen off the straw mat.

With just a week to go for the Tamil and Sinhala new year on April 14 — usually a time when all of Sri Lanka makes a beeline to grocery stores to stock up for the nearly weeklong holiday — the stores and their shelves are empty, and the lines at fuel pumps are long.

Inside homes, the mood is despondent. On the streets, there is palpable anger against the family that the Sinhala Buddhist-majority had worshipped not so long ago for defeating the LTTE.

On Friday, swarms of protesters gathered across Colombo, chanting “Go, Gota, Go”. At one of these protests near Temple Trees, the residence of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the elder brother of President Gotabaya, police nervously pulled tall, yellow barricades across the street.

Earlier in the day, several protesters were dispersed with teargas, perhaps for the first time since people started pouring out on the streets weeks ago to protest the crippling shortages and the massive price hikes.

If diesel is scarce, so too is milk. Sri Lanka imports almost all its dairy requirements, and shops are rationing it out even in big supermarkets.

From a massive protest near Temple Trees, the official residence of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Protesters on the traffic island and masses on both sides of the road. @tallstories reports from Colombo for The Indian Express pic.twitter.com/L0QjU0SDz6

— The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) April 8, 2022

“Only one (400 gm) packet per day per purchase,” reads a sign at Keells, the upmarket grocery. In smaller shops, customers are told they can buy a packet of imported milk powder for Rs 790, but only if they also buy four tubs of yoghurt manufactured by the same company for Rs 100 more.

Sri Lanka is a rice-growing country. But that, too, is scarce because the paddy crop failed after President Gotabaya announced a sudden switch to organic fertilisers, making it sound like a green move when, in fact, the government did not have the dollars to import chemical fertilisers.

Taxi-drivers have formed WhatsApp groups to provide real-time information about fuel stations with stocks, and pumps where queues are short. Shopkeepers call regular customers when they get a fresh supply of milk powder. Cooking gas is in short supply, and power cuts lasting hours have disrupted daily life.

Even through the worst days of the war, Sri Lanka did not experience the kind of economic collapse that it is going through now. So much so that young professionals and students have been turning out in large numbers for the protests.

At Colombo’s own Independence Square, on the steps of the grand memorial hall, protesters holding placards declared: “You messed with the wrong generation.”

Vinura, a 21-year-old student, said: “This mismanagement is affecting our future, our country’s future. People don’t have anything to eat, everything is so expensive.”

Some of the shortage is expected to ease in the coming days.

According to Indian High Commissioner Gopal Baglay, a portion of the first order of 40,000 metric tonnes of rice under India’s $1-bn credit line for food is on its way. India has also delivered a total of 2,70,000 mt of diesel, petrol and aviation fuel, so far.

And yet, this time, Delhi seems to be conscious that the assistance it is sending should not be misread as a bailout for the Rajapaksas.

Baglay said India’s development co-operation over the last decade, which was worth over $3.5 bn — excluding the present assistance — for housing, agriculture, education, training, etc., was always “driven” by needs of the people. “Sri Lanka’s relations with India have brought benefits and development to the people of Sri Lanka,” he said.

India’s assistance is a humanitarian gesture for the people of Sri Lanka to ease their suffering during the crisis, Baglay said. “Other than government to government, it is also humanitarian assistance,” he stressed, even as slogans against the Rajapaksa family grew louder on the streets.

At one of the street protests, a participant told The Indian Express: “I want to tell the Indian government, do not support the Rajapaksa government. We are extremely thankful for all the assistance India has sent to Sri Lanka, but India must side with the people.”

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

Nirupama Subramanian writes: They could have more to do with BJP’s electoral calculations, than giving signals of assurance.

By now, it seems that the stirrings of a political process in Jammu and Kashmir may have less to do with the latest version of the great game that is drawing to a chaotic climax in the region, or with the Biden administration’s gentle reminders about the need to restore normalcy in the truncated and downgraded state, and more to do with the BJP’s push to further its ideological and electoral projects in Kashmir and elsewhere in the country.

The June 24 meeting, by all accounts, was about getting the regional parties of J&K to endorse and participate in the delimitation exercise. The task of redrawing electoral boundaries is a fraught exercise anywhere in the democratic world. In J&K, it carries the additional burden of a communal divide between the two regions and a powerful national party that belongs to an ideological stream that wants to see a “Hindu” chief minister in the Muslim-majority former state.

The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 provides for an increase in the number of assembly seats in the Union territory from 107 to 114. Jammu, which counted for 37 seats before the 2019 changes — 46 were in Kashmir, four in Ladakh, plus 20 symbolically reserved for PoK — may gain more constituencies through delimitation. There has been no delimitation in J&K since 1995. In the intervening years, as election after election has shown, including the District Development Council election in 2020, Jammu and Kashmir have become increasingly polarised into religiously identified regions.

When the Prime Minister invited the mainstream regional parties for talks, what stood out was the walk-back from his earlier stand that the parties were irrelevant to the “Naya Kashmir” that had been inaugurated in August 2019. It was an out-of-character move. Most observers of the Modi-Shah BJP agree that the party does not do U-turns. These tend to be perceived by both supporters and detractors as admissions of failure. From demonetisation in 2016 to the farm laws that triggered the still-ongoing farmers’ agitation, there have been no U-turns by this government.

That is why BJP camp followers, who had bought into the vitriolic rhetoric against the “Gupkar Gang”, are aghast that the party is doing business with the same politicians they thought had been cast into the dustbin of history. Those outside this circle of believers believe the walk-back signals the BJP’s Kashmir policy has hit a wall, and the government is looking for a way out against the larger backdrop of the turmoil in Afghanistan and a hostile neighbourhood.

But there had to be a compelling reason for the government to have made this U-turn. On the face of it, the external environment — in which Pakistan might be in the driving seat in Kabul through the proxy of the Taliban before the end of this year, the situation on the Line of Actual Control where the Chinese have adamantly stayed put, the spectre of a two-front war, therefore the need to strengthen the ceasefire on the Line of Control and begin a dialogue with Pakistan, as well as remove Kashmir from the agenda of US congressional hearings — does present a compelling package of national security reasons for the sudden decision to engage these political parties after two years of saying they don’t matter.

However, this government has hardly tailored its ideological projects to the demands of diplomacy or global geopolitics. After all, it is the same government that walked out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and was ready to throw away a carefully built relationship with Bangladesh for the communally polarising Citizenship Amendment Act (2019). Plus, it seems to carry the burden of demonstrating that it can take on international pressure better than its predecessors. In the 1990s, the Narasimha Rao government withstood much stronger international pressures on Kashmir than the gentle rap on the knuckles that the US delivers now and then to the Modi government. Can Modi be seen to be doing deals with the Taliban or even Pakistan that would dilute the Sangh Parivar’s Mission Kashmir, that too months ahead of an important round of assembly elections?

In any case, this government’s first-ever all-party meeting lacked both the substance and optics that would bring the reassurance of a “return to normalcy” that both Kashmiris and international interlocutors are looking for. Home Minister Amit Shah’s tweet, after the meeting, about strengthening the “democratic process” might have carried more conviction had it not been under his watch that the world’s biggest democracy imposed the longest internet ban on a section of its citizens, preventing both access to and dissemination of information, jailed thousands of Kashmiri politicians, and pre-empted all protest via blanket restrictions.

Rather, it was the emphasis on delimitation in J&K by the Prime Minister and Home Minister at the meeting with J&K political leaders that certainly suggested a focus narrower than the shifting sands of regional geopolitics, which demand grand gestures of reconciliation, people-friendly confidence-building measures, and big promises. There were none of those in the meeting, and there is no indication that such gestures are in the pipeline. There was no timeline to the assurance on the restoration of statehood, a reiteration of a commitment made by the Home Minister in Parliament.

What the government made clear was the chronology. Elections and statehood may follow delimitation. The J&K leaders, who wanted statehood restored first, did not agree with this sequencing, but Prime Minister Modi tweeted that “delimitation has to happen at a quick pace so that polls can happen and J&K gets an elected government that gives strength to J&K’s development trajectory”. Shah tweeted that “the delimitation exercise and peaceful elections are important milestones in restoring statehood as promised in Parliament”.

The renewed attention to J&K, and the emphasis on a process that is likely to create more bad blood, more polarisation along Hindu-Muslim lines, more suspicion in the Valley, could carry a wider resonance in the run-up to a string of assembly elections. Indeed, the compelling reason for a big move by the government could be a result of its single-minded focus at this point — how to ensure a BJP victory in the upcoming elections in crucial states, vital to its prospects for a third term in 2024.

If at all there is a message for Pakistan or the international community in this new phase of engagement with J&K’s political leadership, it is the limits of what can be reversed to the pre-August 5, 2019 position. This is the government’s roadmap towards “normalisation”. It is for the hybrid military-civilian regime now to decide how to re-engage with India within this framework.

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

International TV channels have run visuals of waiting ambulances and patients outside hospitals, and cremations to underline India’s lack of preparedness.

In a virtual meeting with Indian ambassadors and high commissioners posted across the world, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday conveyed the message that the “one-sided” narrative in international media — that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government had failed the country by their “incompetent” handling of the second Covid-19 wave — must be countered.

The meeting came in the wake of strong editorials, commentary and reports in leading international newspapers such as the New York Times, Guardian, Le Monde, and Straits Times, and on TV channels, blaming the Modi government for ignoring warning signs, holding an extended election in West Bengal, and for not cancelling the Kumbh Mela.

International TV channels have run visuals of waiting ambulances and patients outside hospitals, and cremations in Delhi and elsewhere, to underline India’s lack of preparedness.

The official “context” for Thursday’s meeting was India’s efforts to mobilise resources, including oxygen container, concentrators, ventilators, drugs and vaccines, from countries that have offered help as the government struggles with the surge of cases, according to officials present in the meeting.

Besides the envoys, Minister of State V Muraleedharan, Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla and officials dealing with the Covid-19 crisis also attended the hour-long meeting.

Officials present said two big themes were discussed. One was about efforts being made to procure all the material that India needs to overcome the surge. The envoys had several questions on how to send this, to destinations in India where such material should be sent, customs formalities, and related matters of logistics.

Taking control of the international media narrative was the other predominant theme. On this, participants said the message from Jaishankar was not to get overpowered by the “negative” media reports but to take charge and project the government’s side of the story.

Accordingly, the participants were told that the ferocity of the second surge was something no public health expert in the world had predicted, and that health infrastructure even in the most advanced countries had crumbled in the first wave last year, so this was not a disaster that was uniquely Indian.

The envoys were told that oxygen shortage was not due to a shortfall in production but due to restricted geographies of production, entailing transport across vast distances. The participants were also told to disseminate that there could be no connection between the elections, campaign rallies and the spike in numbers.

Jaishankar presented the argument that the numbers were highest in Maharashtra and Delhi, two states that did not go to the polls.

He did not touch upon the subject of Kumbh Mela, which has been been described in every international report as a “super spreader” event.

Although the participating diplomats had questions, no one asked about the consequences of holding the Kumbh. Nor were there any questions about the messaging from crowded election rallies addressed by the Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah, in violation of social distancing norms, or any of the institutional failures pointed out by the international media.

Jaishankar also did not touch upon Vaccine Maitri, under which India shipped 66 million vaccines to other nations. None of the participants asked about this either.

Among suggestions made by envoys was that there was no need to counter every media criticism with a rebuttal of the kind written by the deputy high commissioner to Australia in response to ‘The Australian’ report headlined “Modi Leads India out of lockdown…and into Covid apocalypse”.

Link to original story

This story first appeared in The Indian Express

India’s small southern neighbour has kept its Covid numbers extremely low, and the number of deaths from the disease to only 11. How did Sri Lanka do it? The country’s Director General of Health Services, Dr Anil Jasinghe, explained the areas that Sri Lanka focussed on, and the steps that it took.

Country and Covid-19 stats for Sri Lanka: Population, 21 million; Number of Covid positive cases, 2,033; Number of deaths, 11; Number of recovered patients, 1,639; Number of patients being treated in hospital, 383; Number of patients in ICU, 1.

On Sunday (June 28), Sri Lanka emerged from its nationwide lockdown, which had earlier been relaxed and re-imposed selectively. The success in controlling the spread of the novel coronavirus has prompted the government to consider reopening airports for tourists from August 1. It has also led to the country’s Election Commission to fix August 5 as the date for the parliamentary election that was put off in April due to the global pandemic.

Neither move is without risk, as a majority of Sri Lanka’s positive cases are returning Sri Lankan nationals. In an interview to The Indian Express, the country’s top health official was confident that the protocols being put in place would ensure the guard will not drop.

“We will not be able to achieve 100 per cent security. But we will be using certain tools to come close to 100 per cent so that any mishap, any leak, we will be able to do contact tracing and manage” said Dr Anil Jasinghe, Sri Lanka’s Director-General of Health Services. But he also cautioned that what Sri Lanka had achieved “is not a victory, no one can claim victory yet against coronavirus”.

Although airports will reopen at the beginning of August, any tourist arrivals will commence from later in the month. There is also the realisation that the island is not going to see a flood of arrivals. Pre-pandemic, there were 100 flights and 6,000 to 10,000 passenger arrivals every day. For now, only a small fraction of that number is expected.

“There are a lot of stakeholders in tourism, and I had a meeting with all of them and we have already almost prepared the protocols on how we will receive tourists, and how we can get them to travel in the country, and how we will bid goodbye to them,” Jasinghe told The Indian Express in an interview.

Every disembarking passenger will undergo a RT-PCR test on arrival, irrespective of whether they took the test before embarking on the journey. This will be followed by another RT-PCR test between their fifth and seventh day in the country.

Backpackers and individual tourists will not be allowed. Only tourists in groups of eight persons or more will be permitted. Families with fewer numbers will also be allowed – if they have pre-booked through a local tour agent, and paid in advance for a fixed itinerary. And the travel period has to be for a minimum of six to seven days.

“Health authorities will be tracking them during their stay. Between the 5th and 7th day, a [second] PCR test will be done, and they can’t leave the country without getting the report,” Jasinghe said. “We don’t want tourists to come for one or two days, leave the virus here [in Sri Lanka] and vanish.”

Also, protocols are being worked out with the Election Commission to ensure social distancing in polling booths. For the first time, the results of the election will not be declared on the same day as polling.

Starting early, following up aggressively

Jasinghe said Sri Lanka had been able to keep its case numbers low because of early preparations. Thermal screening and self-declarations at the country’s only international airport began in mid-January. The first PCR laboratory was up and running on January 26 — this was a day before the first case surfaced, with a Chinese woman being found Covid positive as she arrived with a group of other Chinese tourists.

The woman was isolated and hospitalised. She had not infected anyone. The first Sri Lankan national to test positive was a tour guide with an Italian group. The first Covid death occurred on March 29.

As more and more Covid positive cases came up, mostly among returning Sri Lankan tourists, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa locked down the country under a curfew from March 20, which was eased after 52 days on May 11. By then, there were 850 cases in the country.

There was also a cluster in a naval camp, which led to the quarantining of 4,000 people there from April 23 onward. The Navy cluster grew to more than 910. This cluster, along with the inbound arrivals of repatriated Sri Lankans, constituted the bulk of Sri Lanka’s case load.

Geographically, the main hotspots were confined to three or four districts in western Sri Lanka — Puttalam, Colombo, and Kalutara on the coast, and Gampaha, next to the capital district. The Tamil-dominated northern province of Jaffna did not see many cases.

Members of Sri Lanka’s St John’s ambulance service carry a can of disinfectants as they spray them in a public school to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Monday, June 22, 2020. (AP Photo)

“The first thing we did whenever there was a case was early diagnosis, and on-the-dot contact tracing. We did not allow the virus to spread unnecessarily,” Jasinghe said. Up to 60-70 contacts were traced for some patients, but the number depended on the terrain. Dense pockets of urban slums yielded more contacts, but in villages, it was fewer. Sri Lanka was particularly aware that its ageing population and large diaspora made it particularly vulnerable to the infection.

“We did not want a situation of social transmission from clusters – we were able to keep it at cluster level. We wanted to have a situation where we will know every patient and their contacts. That we were able to manage throughout. We never had community transmission, we did not allow it to happen. Severe contact tracing, and then, severe quarantine mission, and that is where the armed forces were very useful,” Jasinghe.

The role of the military in Sri Lanka’s Covid-19 battle has drawn criticism, especially because it is seen as a creature of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and a political instrument in his hands.

Jasinghe said there was nothing wrong with taking the help of the military at a time like this. “Because we can’t design quarantine centres at our will, but the army can do that. You give them a building, and they will do the rest, “ he said.

The military set up 50 government-run quarantine centres in Sri Lanka. Ten hotels, including some five stars, have also been converted into quarantine centres for those who can afford to pay for a 14-day stay in these properties.

In densely populated urban slums, Jasinghe said his team used the “root ball mechanism” — a term used for relocation of trees — for quarantining, that is, evacuating the entire area into a quarantine centre.

Jasinghe’s team also readied 100 ICU beds, but so far, he said, only 10 had been put to use, and at the moment, Sri Lanka’s Covid dashboard shows only one patient in ICU.

A staff official wearing protective mask checks the display items quantity on a shelf at a Keels super market, amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Reuters

Building on what already existed: primary healthcare

Jasinghe also credited Sri Lanka’s robust state-run free and universal healthcare system, through which it carried out a sustained battle against malaria and was able to pronounce victory over the disease in 2016. Sri Lanka’s public health system comprises a pyramidal structure with a network of primary health centres, district and teritary hospitals.

“One has to build on what exists. Our strength was our public health system. The more the country develops, especially in the west, they simply get rid of their public health system. But in our case, we have a full-blown public health system — we have medical health inspectors, public health midwives, and so on, and it’s all over the country. There are clear levels of care and authority. Also, we have a nicely knitted medical care and hospital system. Generally, you get good doctors, good medical care in the government sector, it is not neglected in Sri Lanka. Every 1.5 km, you have a government health centre,” he said.

Hydroxycholoroquine was the only medicine administered to Covid-19 patients in hospitals, Jasinghe said.

Sri Lanka’s strategy on testing for the coronavirus

Sri Lanka has done 1,04,272 PCR tests so far, conducting a maximum of 2,089 tests on June 3. Jasinghe said the government had the capacity to carry out more tests, and a new facility that can carry out 500 tests per day had recently opened. As the airports open, there would be a need to ramp up the testing. Jasinghe said private labs were also being roped in for that.

Though critics point to the low number of tests — slightly over 0.5 per cent of the population — Jasinghe defended what he described as the strategy of targeting vulnerable groups from which people were chosen for testing at random.

“If your situation is social transmission, then you have to test a lot, and it is still not enough. That is what is happening in Mumbai. In Sri Lanka we went in for targeted PCR. Very early on, we selected a set of hospitals around the country, and we had isolation units in each hospital. Patients with fever and respiratory symptoms were admitted to those isolation units. For them, PCR was done. That is called passive surveillance.

“And then we did PCR randomly at OPDs, thereafter we did in social settings — fish markets, among trishaw drivers, slums. This was completely random testing,” he said — arguing that as the positivity rate was less than 2 per cent in these high risk categories, it “means we don’t have social transmission, and there’s no point going to town and taking swabs from everyone”.

Jasinghe said more tests would reduce the positivity rate further. “If we take a thousand tests, all thousand would be negative — for sure,” he said.

Dealing with visitors from China

With two mega Chinese projects — Colombo Port City and the Hamabantota port — Sri Lanka gets plenty of Chinese visitors. But other than the first case of a Chinese tourist who was Covid-19 positive and was detected early, there were no other instances of the infection being brought in by anyone travelling from China.

A large group of Sri Lankan students was evacuated early on and quarantined in Boossa, a naval camp near Galle in southern Sri Lanka. Visas on arrival were cancelled for Chinese travellers, before the country closed down its airports altogether in the third week of March.

“Those Chinese who were already in Sri Lanka, they were no threat. Those who were visiting from China, they posed a threat. But we did not have much of a problem, because basically Chinese are disciplined, by their own hierarchy. The Chinese authorities complied with our rules, and they took steps ahead of us, they did not allow Chinese workers (working on projects in Sri Lanka) to move out of their work settings,” Jasinghe said.

Link to original story

SAWM India member Nirupama Subramanian wrote about the fascinating history of the place called Mahabalipuram or Mammalapuram and its centuries old connection with Buddhism and China just before the informal summit between  India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping and the place caught world wide attention.

Mahabalipuram, or Mamallapuram, 56 km south of Chennai on the Tamil Nadu coast, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet China’s President Xi Jinping on October 11 & 12 in an informal Wuhan-style summit, had ancient links with Buddhism and China through the maritime outreach of the Pallava dynasty.

The setting speaks to several contemporary themes in India-China relations — and of contacts, both continuous and changing, across space and time. While the powerful symbolism of Mahabalipuram will likely not succeed in influencing China’s hard-nosed assertion over J&K and other issues with India, the remarkable historical significance of the venue bears underlining.

When the Pallavas ruled

The name Mamallapuram derives from Mamallan, or “great warrior”, a title by which the Pallava King Narasimhavarman I (630-668 AD) was known. It was during his reign that Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist monk-traveller, visited the Pallava capital at Kanchipuram.

Narasimhavarman II (c.700-728 AD), also known as Rajasimhan, built on the work of earlier Pallava kings to consolidate maritime mercantile links with southeast Asia.

Most interestingly, as historian Tansen Sen recorded in his 2003 work Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400, Narasimhavarman II sent a mission to the Tang court in 720 with a request that would seem unusual in the context of India-China relations today.

The emissaries of the Pallava king sought the permission of Emperor Xuangzong to fight back Arab and Tibetan intrusions in South Asia. And, “Pleased with the Indian king’s offer to form a coalition against the Arabs and Tibetans, the Chinese emperor bestowed the title of ‘huaide jun’ (the Army that Cherishes Virtue) to Narayansimha II’s troops”, Sen wrote. The offer of help by the Pallava ruler, Sen noted, may have had more to do with furthering trade and for the prestige of association with the Chinese emperor, rather than any real prospect of helping him to fight off enemies in the faraway north.

The Descent of the Ganga/Arjuna’s Penance, a rock carving commissioned by Narasimhavarman I, with its depiction of the Bhagirathi flowing from the Himalayas, may serve as a reminder of the geography of India-China relations, and their shared resources.

Hindus, Muslims and China

Tamil-Chinese links continued after the Pallavas, flourishing under the Cholas as the Coromandel coast became the entrepot between China and the Middle East. The links extended to a wider area beyond Mahabalipuram, through a layered history that has left a rich tapestry of society, culture, art and architecture, which is diverse and complex, and reaches up to modern times.

If he looks south from the platform of the 7th century Shore Temple, President Xi might be able to spot a key symbol of 20th century — the white domes of the Madras Atomic Power Station at Kalpakkam, 15 km down the coastline. MAPS, built in the 1980s, is India’s first indigenously constructed power station.

India’s secularism and diversity would not be on the agenda of the two leaders — however, their meeting ground is in a part of the country where this ethos is a lived reality. Hindu- and Muslim-majority villages alternate along that coast, each community having lived next to the other for centuries.

By the time Islam arrived on south India’s east coast in the 9th century, Muslims had already started trading with China by maritime routes, Sen wrote. The trading missions that the Cholas sent to the Song court included Muslims. A trader named Abu Qasim was second-in-command of a mission sent in 1015; the next mission, in 1033, included one Abu Adil. “It is possible that both Abu Qasim and Abu Adil were members of the Tamil-speaking Muslim community on the Coromandel coastknown as Ilappai,” Sen wrote. Today, the ancient port of Marakanam is a fishing village, known for its Muslim boatmakers.

Continuing connections

In later centuries, the Coromandel coast retained its importance for trade between China and the west. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was a staging post for the Dutch, French and British for control of the seas between South Asia and Southeast Asia, as the Europeans fought to protect their trade routes with China and other countries in the region.

The ancient port city of Pondicherry, 80 km south of Mahabalipuram, was a French colony famous for its Chinese exports known as “Coromandel goods”, including crepe de chine. Today the Union Territory, with its French legacy, Tamil residents, Bengali and international devotees of Sri Aurobindo, is among the most diverse and cosmopolitan of cities in South India.

After establishing their writ on the Coromandel Coast, the British expanded eastward and established control over the Straits of Malacca, essentially to protect their trade routes to China and the rest of the region.

Sadras became a huge centre for the Dutch-controlled manufacture of cotton and muslin. The Dutch presence in the region grew rapidly after they established themselves in Java in 1603. They traded within Asia, buying textiles, metal, and porcelain, importing and exporting between India, China and Japan, to keep the spice trade going.

Link to original story